I disagree with OPs description of what kind of raid Karazhan was (Pretty sure Blizz has said that ToT is in fact their biggest raid ever in terms of raid-size) but I'd love another raid like it. It was anything but linear, having lots of extra rooms that didn't really serve any purpose to the actual fighting, but it made the tower seem more real. Instead of just having a hallway with a boss at the end there were several rooms at the sides with mobs you'd never go for unless you're farming rep, and then there was huge areas (stairs next to attumen) that was there just because. Loved how they used that space for the wotlk pre-event boss too.

You could go around exploring areas of the raid just because it was a fun place to be, and having so many optional orders in which you killed bosses was really neat.

Kara was great fun, but I think as the game changes, so do the raids the fit into it. We got a very nice raid last tier with ToT, some really cool bosses and areas in there with an awesome final boss fight (not Ra-den). Kara was great, but can stay where it is.

Karazhan broke guilds, took too much time to effectively PUG in an era before LFR, and was a bit of a bottleneck/choke point before (25 man) Raiding began in earnest. It's more of a spiritual successor to UBRS style quasi-raid stepping stone that was ultimately overtaken by 10 man modes, LFR, and finally Flex than it is pinnacle of raiding content.

However, what it did capture beautifully was atmosphere. It was a hell of a lot more charming and than the loot tunnels that took over later expansions, I'll agree whole heartedly to that.

Agreed. The guild I was heavily involved with fell apart trying to progress through Kara. It was a great raid and is still fun to run through for a different style of raid.

The nice thing about Karazhan was its authentic feeling architecture. In that sense it was much like the Vanilla instances, and less of the corridor>bossroom>corridor>bossroom design most raids follow. Good ambient sound and voice acting in it, too.

And it definitely served its purpose well as an intro raid that was challenging for newbies. Even if now most of the bosses would seem very very simple, they felt complicated to me.

Karazhan seemed very much to have been designed as a set-piece first, and as a lair for bosses second. By that I mean that it was built to be as realistic a setting as possible without priority given to boss mechanics - no area was designed specifically around a certain boss, but instead the bosses seem made to fit within the environment. The theater was built first because it was cool for Karazhan to have a theater - the theater bosses were added in afterwards. Ditto with the dining hall, the stables, the library, etc.

It was a magnificent structure that extended far overhead and even underground, with all manner of interconnecting hallways and stairwells and secret passages, outer walls, and backdoors, to a degree that no other raid comes close to, although the Blackrock Depths (and to an extent Blackrock Spire) come close.

While other raids like Ulduar, Icecrown, Twilight Bastion, and even Siege have some interesting environments, they seem to largely consist of big open hallways that lead to wide open rooms, designed specifically for their bosses to fit within - boss encounter first, and dungeon built around it.

To this extent, I'd like to see other raids like Karazhan - environments that are constructed first as if they were actual realistic locations in the world, with bosses included within the environment rather than dominating the environment. You can still have grand halls and open areas, but they should be included organically rather than crammed in because you've got a boss idea that needs a big open space.

Icecrown Citadel's plague wing is a good example - I was hoping to see huge cauldrons of bubbling plague, abomination assembly lines, hordes of plague cultists working with different experiments, plague-spreader construction yards, a huge teeming foundry for the Lich King's bio-weapon production. Instead it was a big long hallway with two wide open rooms for boss fights. It was clearly designed first to accommodate the bosses, and little thought was given to depict it as a realistic environment.

yap. sadly, imo all post-wotlk environments are also designed this way. especially pandaria seems very artificial to me, as if they came up with quests/storyline first and then designed the lands around those. should be other way round.

Karazhan was a great place to go, not so sure it was as easy as people seem to remember I mean you had to be good enough to have done Heroic Shadow Lab Heroic Escape from Durnholde Keep and Heroic Opening the Dark Portal, just to have earned the right to step into the place.

But the haunted house atmosphere the tongue in check dialogue a sub plots were pretty cool, and certainly its was not the loot tunnel of todays instances and raids, one of my favorite raids. While game add ons and class simplification makes most of the bosses look simple by todays standards back in the day CCing one refreshing fear on another and waiting for 3 sunders to dps another is probably way too complex for trash today right ?

If you mean to ask if we want another raid inside of a castle, then absolutely yes. Blizzard hasn't done nothing like Karazhan in years. Even Throne of Thunder is all about running through ruins, sewers and forgotten crap, with the actual palace being 1/20 of the place.

I was still new to wow with Kara, but I remember it being fairly easy. The gear wasn't better than the crafted stuff or the PVP gear. We'd full clear it in maybe 2.5 hours, I couldn't tell you anything about the story of it, and it was basically a badge of justice farm (or whatever the badges were back then). I do miss shackling and MCing though and range tanking Curator.

Kara was actually pretty hard prior to the massive gear buff and raid nerfings of 2.1. Most calling it easy ran it after or far after I am sure. Aran pretty much required 2 warlocks to beat since the elementals needed chain banished/feared. And Kara didn't require heroics to run. Just normal modes. Although normal Black Morass was incredibly difficult with the typical pug back then.

Personally, I loved Kara, and would like to see another raid like that. However, I wish they really had a stronger story behind Kara that could have really included the history behind it. For me, it was really awesome mostly because I was still new to raiding back then, so I have a lot of nostalgic feelings about it.

Kara is so entrenched in my mind because i had fun there and with the people i was with. I remember misdirecting the trash onto a gnome mage in the room outside Moroes and he couldnt work out why he was always dying on the stairs.

I finally told him towards the end of Wrath when we were doing an ICC run, I dont think that I have ever heard Vent bust up laughing so much, thats why I enjoy my raiding, not for progression (mostly though it is nice!) but for the people i am with - and in Kara i was with some really excellent people that made it fun!

Karazhan was pretty high on my list of favorite raids in WoW, so I wouldn't mind seeing something at least similar to it. That would be a good time to flesh out and implement something with the Karazhan Crypts.

I didn't mind Kara, but I do think the OP is exaggerating a little much. Naxx IMO was bigger, and as far as storylines go, Kara didn't have much. Nobody still knows what was up with Prince Malchazar and why he is the last boss of the instance. Still, it was a good instance, but probably too much trash (the curator trash and the stuff after it IMO is still the worst stuff in the game).

While other raids like Ulduar, Icecrown, Twilight Bastion, and even Siege have some interesting environments, they seem to largely consist of big open hallways that lead to wide open rooms, designed specifically for their bosses to fit within - boss encounter first, and dungeon built around it.

To this extent, I'd like to see other raids like Karazhan - environments that are constructed first as if they were actual realistic locations in the world, with bosses included within the environment rather than dominating the environment. You can still have grand halls and open areas, but they should be included organically rather than crammed in because you've got a boss idea that needs a big open space.

True, but keep in mind that Karazhan was designed specifically as a 10-man raid. Because of that, those small hallways fit well and weren't much of an issue. Can you imagine a 25-man raid in small rooms like Attumen or Maiden, for example?

These days, all raids have to accommodate both 10 and 25 players, and now everything in between, too.

That said, my favorite part of Karazhan was the music My least favorite part was too much trash, especially between Curator and Shade.

That said, it was my first raid experience and I LOVED the way each trash pull had it's own intricacies, CC's needed, and getting through the place felt like we really accomplished something.

Karazhan was a great place to go, not so sure it was as easy as people seem to remember I mean you had to be good enough to have done Heroic Shadow Lab Heroic Escape from Durnholde Keep and Heroic Opening the Dark Portal, just to have earned the right to step into the place.

Actually you just had to do those instances in normal mode, which was moderately challenging for freshly dinged 70s and thus a good "are you ready to raid" check. Most heroic 5 mans probably had a tougher gear requirement then Kara.

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Originally Posted by ItachiZaku

I was still new to wow with Kara, but I remember it being fairly easy. The gear wasn't better than the crafted stuff or the PVP gear. We'd full clear it in maybe 2.5 hours, I couldn't tell you anything about the story of it, and it was basically a badge of justice farm (or whatever the badges were back then). I do miss shackling and MCing though and range tanking Curator.

Yeah if you ran it when Season 2 arena gear was buyable with honor then it would have been quite easy and farmable. To our guild in greens and blues who were TOTALLY new to raiding, it was weeks of progression raiding to get to Prince. God we were terrible back then :P